Monday, August 08, 2005

DID I MENTION PIE?

Here it is 4 pm for the me in America and the me in Japan is up typing at 2 am after a solid 4 hours' sleep, all the usual RB logography floating through my head but during the standard wherever daytime there's lots of other lifestuff going on that keeps me from doing this kind of running on at the keyboard, necessitating judicious extempore weeding and whatnot but it's 2 am, who's listening.

At the end of my immediately recent sojourn in the US, which naturally involved my historic quest for what I call American icons (most of which were food; exemplary exceptions: Corn Husker's Lotion, Burma Shave mug shaving soap etc.), such as various kinds of pies, (pies are not big in Japan, though they're not small either: a local scientific anomaly much like antimatter, they don't exist here in any measurable quantity), my brother Mick and I scarfed our way to an amazing scientific breakthrough, more on which below. (The fact is, I dragged him along on this extremely difficult and time- (not to say carb-) consuming diet, though not all that much against his will; he was, after all, my experienced guide to the savory depths of CarbWorldAmerica.)

In addition to pie, a truncated list of such icons would include donuts of all traditional descriptions. (“Donuts” in Japan are like “bagels” in Japan: a NY bagel-donut native chuckles longingly at the misapplication of those terms, when, with the addition or removal of a little gritty sugar, those objects as produced here could be marketed interchangeably. I could go on at length about the eternally iconic donuts of the 24-hour tippler Baker Bill of our childhood years, but I shall leave that to the mutual blog (The Blog Brothers) Mick and I decided to start, which is still in production, awaiting Hollywood contracts.) I had never had Krispy Kreme donuts and had heard much about them; as formerly renowned donut connoisseurs, Mick and I did a multimorning marathon glazed donut comparison between Krispy Kremes and Von's: Vons won) – ah yes, the list: other kinds of donuts (e. g., jelly, crème-filled, French, chocolate covered); chocolate chip (and other kinds of) cookies; donuts, several varieties of root beer, all kinds of pies, varieties of pizza bigger than my head (even bigger than a Cadillac hubcap!); donuts, more than vanilla ice cream (you could throw a football inside the ice cream freezer sections of American supermarkets, if you weren't busy reading all the ice cream titles), genuine (taste them!) fudgsicles, large pizzas, the full spectrum of breads and cheeses - which reminds me: cheezits - home-fried potatoes and genuine Mexican food, all in addition to (or ad hoc replacing) regular meals and donuts, as well as pizzas and root beer with ice cream and fudgsicles. Note that that's a truncated list, as mentioned so long ago.

At the end of a full-month of this lovingly programmed diet (scientific experimentation requires precision), my brother had lost 5 pounds and I had lost 2 kilos (4.5 pounds). Our new diet book, just in time to serve as the polar answer for those many frustrated Atkins dieters (all too often, the truth turns out to be what you've been disdaining all these years), will be called Stuff Your Way to Slim: The Brady Hi-Carb Diet. Tune in at 4 am tomorrow, when I may feverishly elaborate on the details.

(Part of the secret is in running around in pursuit of only the finest carbs...)

About Me

Born and raised in upstate New York, traveled for a decade after college, lived in various places around the world, keeping a journal. Settled in Kyoto in 1980, moved to this mountainside above Lake Biwa in 1995. Started Pure Land Mountain in April 2002.
Written and sidebar contents 2002~2015 copyright Robert Brady